


why don't we surrender?

by ghostbandaids



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Assassin Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), BAMF GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), First Meetings, Historical References, Hopeful Ending, Immortality, M/M, Meet-Ugly, Not Beta Read, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmates, all they do is hold hands it could be platonic, lmao idk if it's accurate at all, tfw your soulmate is hired to kill you, that should be a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-20 18:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30009264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostbandaids/pseuds/ghostbandaids
Summary: George watched as his ancestral home was abandoned, as his family name died and everything that he’d known crumbled before him.He watched as empires fell, kings were betrayed and replaced, oceans were traveled and wars fought for the land discovered.Everyone that he met was pulled down by time eventually.But not George.In a world where people are stuck at 18 until they meet their soulmate, George waits a millennium or two for his.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 260





	why don't we surrender?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rotontheblock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rotontheblock/gifts).



> okay i typed this on my phone in class (no editing here) and i wasn't going to post it but i'm a slut for compliments on twitter so i couldn't resist. blame rotontheblock if this is bad because he is the reason this is here >:D
> 
> interspersed poetry is sonnet 116, shakespeare. title is from half-mast, branches
> 
>  **CW:** mentions of guns, mentions of death

_ Let me not to the marriage of true minds _

_ Admit impediments. Love is not love _

_ Which alters when it alteration finds, _

_ Or bends with the remover to remove. _

George saw the barrel of the rifle in the window and braced for the recoil of a bullet into his heart. 

After all, he’d lived a long time. Long enough to see those around him die or be killed, long enough to see the advent of muskets and pistols and shining, cold sniper rifles like the one tilting down from the sill above him. Death was nothing to fear.

He wondered if he would have one of those life-flashing-on-eyelids moments. He’d certainly seen enough for a feature-length film, wasn’t even sure if he could get through it all in the arc of impact before he hit the ground. 

His name hadn’t always been George. Georgios, his mother had named him — it meant farmer. And for the first years of his life, his  _ real  _ life, that’s what he was. Tilling and plowing the earth for some distant king, lips wrapped around the commoner’s Greek they called across the fields in, hands curved around a trowel. 

And then he turned eighteen and the waiting started. 

For as long as his family lived, he farmed for them, his youthful body refusing to age as theirs decomposed into the crop-plots, and their children and their grandchildren and the children after that found their soulmates and aged on. 

George watched as his ancestral home was abandoned, as his family name died and everything that he’d known crumbled before him. 

He watched as empires fell, kings were betrayed and replaced, oceans were traveled and wars fought for the land discovered.

He watched as some people remained waiting for decades, maybe centuries, before finding their soulmates and noticing streaks of grey in their hair, a reminder of the years that they’d managed to evade. But when they found their soulmates and their life started again, he was left behind in a strange stasis. Everyone that he met was pulled down by time eventually.

But not George.

He learned to read and write hundreds of years after his birth, first Greek and then Latin, standing in the crowd and listening to Julius and Augustus who came after him. Decades after that, he learned French, though the people could tell that he was an outsider when he visited. 

When he heard of Shakespeare, listened to the emotion in the plays and comedies crafted with words he couldn’t understand, he pored over texts of English, speaking to people in cafes and shops until he could understand it too. Of course, English was a fickle thing — by the time the declarations of American rebellion were delivered to the mainland, he struggled to translate their attempts at independence. 

Secretly, he rooted for them. George had always liked the underdog. 

“You can kill me now,” George told the person in the window. “Really, I don’t mind. Just get it over with.”

He heard rustling, saw the shift of someone above him, the flash of a bright green hoodie. 

“Well?” he asked. “I don’t think that your kind is known for hesitation.”

“Your—your hair,” the man said. 

“What about it?” George asked. He’d always thought that his hair was rather nice.

“It’s gone white.”

“Oh.”

_ O no! it is an ever-fixed mark _

_ That looks on tempests and is never shaken; _

_ It is the star to every wand’ring bark, _

_ Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. _

George made most of his choices on impulse; after all, there were no real consequences, infinite time to do everything. He sometimes thought that none of it mattered. 

America won their war, and George felt almost as if he’d been some patron saint, wishing for the country's success and watching its triumph from across the sea. So he bought tickets on a ship — it was an awful ship that he hated by the end of the passage — and made his way to the shores of the new land. 

He found it lacking in lots of things and missed the refined air of high-society Europe, but there was something enticing about the raw edge, the wildness of the states.

So he stayed. 

“Was it white before?” 

“No. It changed when you looked into the sights.”

George wasn’t able to stop the sharp breath that filled his lungs. 

Most people didn’t think about the chance that their soulmate wouldn’t show up in a year or two — maybe in their thirties if they were unlucky. 

Most people missed a couple of years of aging at most before they started again. 

George waited for a soulmate to show up, deciding after centuries of life alone that maybe there wouldn’t be one. He collected knowledge and language and money, one-night-stands but never anything substantial. 

He ignored the fact that somewhere, in the back of his mind, he was still waiting.

He watched horsepower transition to cars, avoiding drafts because he’d never gotten a birth certificate, never been registered in any country. He visited battlefields and watched soldiers die in front of him, mourning for the soulmates that had never met and the soulmates that had lost their other halves.

Each day he felt like he’d seen enough, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to give up. 

“Did  _ they _ hire you?”

“Yes.”

_ Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks _

_ Within his bending sickle’s compass come; _

He watched as technology reared its ugly, binary head, pulling all the information he’d learned into the screen of a tiny telephone, small enough to fit into his hand. 

George had never liked phones that much; he settled for the fact that they were awfully convenient. There was a tinge of annoyance each time he looked something up and realized that they hadn’t gotten the historical records  _ quite  _ right, but there were gaps in his recount of history — his 50-year cheese tour, his explorations of the Alps — so he was forced to trust most of what the internet told him. 

It didn’t take long for him to realize that technology wasn’t good for people like him, the practically-immortals. 

They’d gotten away with it before, drifting around the edges of society, trying not to influence history or be noticed, but when gargantuan governments formed and built their information agencies around themselves, George knew that it wouldn’t be long until someone found him. He'd seen too much, was too valuable or maybe too dangerous because for all they knew, he would be around long after they died. 

It was harder to travel and live in the modernizing world each decade; the absence of passports and social security numbers and paperwork of any sort made navigating life generally difficult. Made him stand out. 

They did come for him eventually, told him that they would use him for some historical study if he would just  _ come with them, right now, just get in the car _ . The tone of their voices suggested that when he went with them, he wouldn’t be coming back. Like they considered him something different than a person: an anomaly.

He refused. They nodded, faces grim. He knew at that moment that they weren’t going to let him continue with his observation of history, that they would stop him, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to care. What was the point of more years without someone to spend them with?

“I’m supposed to kill you,” the man said, a weak laugh in his voice. There was something in the way he moved that told George he was young, hadn’t been around for long — and no near-immortal would work for an agency trying to eliminate them. 

“I know,” George answered. “Suppose they’ll be alright with you leaving me alone because your job’s not necessary anymore?”

The man shook his head, eyes sad. 

“That’s alright,” George said. “You’ll be able to age now, at least—make it quick.” He could almost sense the ache in his joints, the weariness and fatigue that his body had never let him feel. Even if he died in this instant, he would die with the joy of being minutes older than eighteen for the first time in his life. 

He tilted his chin up, picturing himself as one of those regal kings he’d seen fall. Wondered if he’d ever heard of a tragedy where someone had to kill their lover and then wondered if his memory was finally failing him because he couldn’t think of one. At least his last sight would be a nice one; the man, with his freckles and windswept blond hair and chiseled face reminded George of the men he'd seen sculpted and placed in marbled museums. 

No bullet came. 

“I can’t,” the man whispered. “I—I can’t do it.”

For a second, the air was filled with heavy silence, the rustling of trash in the alley blown by the wind the only sound. George met the bright green eyes of his soulmate, saw the hesitance curled in his irises. 

“Then come with me,” George said. “We’ll leave.”

“Where will we go?”

“Wherever you want—anywhere.” Because George could hide them in fifty countries, in hundreds of different cities, with different names and different identities. He’d lived countless lives before as unrememberable men; changing again wouldn’t hurt. And now he had a reason to try.

“Let’s go then,” the man said, a faint smile across his face. “Let’s go everywhere.”

“I’m George.”

“I’m Dream.”

Dream left the gun and shed his equipment, trailing George as if he was worried he would look away and the man would be gone. He walked too fast, shoes clipping George’s heels. George tangled their fingers together as they walked, hands swinging together. 

“Slow down,” George said, taunting. “We have time.”

It was funny, really, because for the first time in his life, his time was finite. His time was limited and fragile and he was going to wrinkle and weaken and age. But the statement  _ we have time _ had never felt more true. 

_ Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, _

_ But bears it out even to the edge of doom. _

_ If this be error and upon me proved, _

_ I never writ, nor no man ever loved. _

_ -Sonnet 116, Shakespeare _

**Author's Note:**

> okayyy so i think that in this universe, most couples would have to wait and see if they were aging together to find out if they were soulmates. george has been around so long that when he and dream met, his hair turns white immediately (does it make sense? kind of)
> 
> [my twitter](https://twitter.com/ghostbandaids) if you want to come yell with/at me (:
> 
> (a/n to subs: i promise i almost have a dadschlatt chapter done and an artist tommy, stay tuned)
> 
> thanks for reading! let me know what you thought! comments and kudos are a shining light in this bitch of a world <3


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